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3 Quick Tips to Get Smart with Facebook Advertising Campaigns

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past decade (and possibly even then), odds are that you’re familiar with Facebook. It is, after all, the most powerful social media network today, with 1.44 billion active monthly users (as of March 31, 2015).

To put that in perspective, that’s slightly larger than the entire population of China (1.36 billion according to http://www.census.gov/popclock/). It would, roughly, require every one of the U.S.’ 321,000,000+ residents to hold four accounts (and then some). What’s more, 82.8% of those active users live outside of the U.S. and Canada… and Facebook is growing, with an average of 7,246 new users every 15 minutes – or eight new users every second. Crazy, right?

Point being, it’s huge. Lots of power. Lots of influence.

You want in.

So how do you put the power of Facebook to work for your business? The answer is simple: Facebook advertising.

Making Facebook Advertising Work for You

Ok, so theoretically, advertising on Facebook is easy. It’s an easy concept to grasp and easy decision to make. Really, it’s even easy to facilitate. But, as with anything in marketing and advertising, nothing is that straightforward. You need to know what you’re doing to make your campaign a success. So, I give to you three ways to get better traction with your Facebook advertising campaigns:

1. KISS (Keep it simple, stupid short and simple)

The beauty of social media is that it’s quick and it’s direct. Readers have short attention spans on social media – they’re scrolling, half out of boredom, in most cases – so you need to grab their attention even more quickly than you do with traditional media! How do you make that happen? By keeping your ad copy short and direct.

Studies have shown that Facebook wall posts with less than 80 characters receive more than 60% more engagement than longer posts. 80 characters is nothing! Heck, even Twitter gives you 140… but 80 is the magic number.

There’s an easy way to make those 80 characters work for you – write your ads with this format:

“Stop being stuck in _________! Get __________!

The first blank should be something relevant and problematic to your reader, the second should provide the solution – which, of course, relates to what you’re selling. It’s a simple formula that gets their attention with a problem/ solution format in a catchy way. KISS.

Samples

Carousel ads – simple and visually engaging.Simple and direct ads usually work best on Facebook.

2. Test different images

In my experience to date, testing and changing images has had the most impact on my Facebook ads’ performance. In the grand scheme of Facebook, images are a relatively new concept (remember when you had just the 40-character ads that showed on the sidebar?!)… and with that newness comes the opportunity to do lots of testing to master your perfect formula first.

In truth, there is no magic catch-all solution for what makes an image resonate. Much of it has to do with different demographics – not to mention different audiences (techies likely respond to a different visual than most 14 year-old girls)… and to say Facebook’s audience is varied is the understatement of the year. More on that to come… But I digress.

Test your images.

For example, do you get better results from bright colors vs. simple images on white backgrounds?

Are your response rates different if you feature images of people compared to inanimate objects?

Do words as part of your images change your results? Image size?

Point being, images are not just images; there are countless variables possible. Consider what they are and then test them with your audience to find what works for you. To measure and test, consider using Facebook pixels.

3. Target your audience

Facebook’s audience is huge… 1.44 billion people huge.

Target everyone, and you’ll spend a fortune… while experiencing an incredibly low conversion rate, I might add. Get the biggest bang for your buck by making good use of ad targeting tools, such as Custom Audience and Look-a-Like Audience.

There really are far too many options to get into in this one post, but to give you an idea… You can target by geographic location. Age. Interests. Occupation. Income level. Gender. The options are endless – and Facebook’s capabilities are only growing stronger. And with that strength comes results for its advertisers.

Those results come in multi-faceted form. Custom Audience campaigns are being proven to not only increase clickthroughs and conversions, but to do so while lowering the per-lead costs.

Facebook advertising holds a huge opportunity for marketers – not only to hit a huge audience, but to hit the right audience. What’s more, Facebook users are interested in knowing what’s going on and in staying “in the know” – as long as it’s a topic relevant to them or something they’re interested in learning about. And with Facebook’s updates that now include advertisements in reader’s feeds, it’s easier than ever for advertisers to get their content read.

Bottomline…

Now, the power of successfully advertising on Facebook lies with the marketers – it’s no longer about figuring out how to get your content to display – it’s about getting it to resonate. It’s up to you to know how to reach your audience, and to create content in a way that appeals to them. The lessons are constantly evolving and the perfect solution and formula for your particular audience is changing with it. Follow the above three rules and get on board – and get better results!

Written by Jerry Low

Geekdad, Netrepreneur, growth hacker, SEO junkie, and founder of WebRevenue Inc. Live to eat, loves all things Internet, and owns more domain names he can handle. Say hello to me on Twitter!